(784b) Mesostructural Catalysts and High Performance Catalytic Processes

The construction of traditional catalysts commonly follows the formula of â??additives / active components / supportâ?, among which the support is the continuous phases and supports the active centers and the electronic and/or structural additives. In the past decades, studies on nano catalysts makes many excellent achievements, due to the progresses on materials synthesis let researchers capable of controlling the subtle structures of catalysts at smaller scale and capable of assembling complex structures with small moieties cooperating in functions with each other, and also due to the progresses on characterization techniques. More and more details about catalysis have been revealed. The synergistic effects at nano even mesocale of catalysts and reactants have been recognized much more important to affect the catalytic performances significantly, in which the reactant molecules access to and leave from reactive position of catalysts by passing the peripheral structures around active centers and withstanding the multi interactions with them. The exploration on artificial hierarchical catalysts including the control of reactants transfer at mesoscale, aiming at the integral performance of catalysts by considering multi factors of interactions, has been the important method to design new catalysts. Based on the thoughts, we have constructed in the past several years hierarchical or mesostructural catalysts according to the principles: 1) reactive moiety composed of clusters or nano domains strongly interacting with each other electronically or structurally and showing much better activity; 2) peripheral structures around the active centers, which tune the reactive moiety and shape the reactant molecules orientating and accessing to the reactive centers. The assembly of catalysis jointly shows high activity and exclusive selectivity toward certain reactions important to the efficient utilization of resources and the production of high value chemicals with green processes.